


Oxygen

by Wordplaysam



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: 23!penny, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-23
Updated: 2018-03-23
Packaged: 2019-04-06 23:31:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14067969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wordplaysam/pseuds/Wordplaysam
Summary: Penny-Twenty-Three takes a moment to himself in the fortieth timeline, but Quentin, as always, seems determined to ruin it.





	Oxygen

**Author's Note:**

> Written between the airing of 311 and 312.

Penny was leaning against the rail at the bow of the _Muntjac_ when he heard the hatch door open behind him. He didn’t look back to see who it was. He didn’t want to talk to anyone but Julia, and he would have been able to tell if his visitor were her.

“I lost Alice,” Quentin said. So, the worst of all possible options. “I brought her back, but she’s not the same. I don’t know if she ever will be.”

“Bet it was your fault she died, too,” Penny shot back. “Don’t try to sympathize with me, Coldwater.”

That shut Quentin up pretty good, and they were silent for several long minutes. So silent, in fact, that with Penny not giving Quentin the satisfaction of looking back, Penny wasn’t entirely sure Quentin was even still there. But then:

“I have a son,” Quentin said.

And that did make Penny look back. Quentin drew a shaky hand though his hair.

“With Alice?”

Quentin barked out a laugh that had exactly zero mirth in it. “No. Eliot.”

“ _Eliot_.”

“I mean, there was—ah. A woman involved. In the—it wasn’t like…” Quentin, awkward and sputtering: almost enough to make you miss Quentin-as-the-Beast. He walked to the rail next to Penny and leaned against it. “Look, the point is, I’ve never loved anyone like I loved Rupert. I’ve never loved anything like I loved Rupert. Not even Fillory. Not even _magic_. But he’s in this other timeline, and I don’t think I’ll ever see him again, and when I remember that, it’s like someone is standing on my chest.”

“Because he’s air, and you’re suffocating,” Penny said, and Quentin’s reply was clear in the downward slope of his shoulders. In the distance, at the horizon line, birds dipped and swooped at the water. Penny hadn’t spent enough time in Fillory to know if it had the same kinds of birds as Earth.

‘I’m sorry for everything me-Twenty-Three did,” Quentin said. “I mean, it wasn’t, me-me. Me-Forty, I guess. But it was a _version_ of me, with all my instincts and personality, so I guess if I really dig deep about it—” 

_God._ Penny lifted a hand. 

“Look, man. I don’t know why you’re out here. You don’t have to convince me not to hit you again. I just needed to get it out of my system.” So clearly a thing he needed to do, that if his Julia were here she would have asked him not to do it before they even walked through the door to this timeline. But, of course, her not being here is why he needed to hit Quentin in the first place.

“I’m sure it’s not the last time you’ll ever hit me,” Quentin said. He was probably right. “I just wanted you to know, you’re not, like, alone.”


End file.
